Homage to Memory

we were…
a happy trooper in a childhood spent in the countryside
a soldier awaiting in silence the last attack
a fighter pilot in defense of english skies
a spy hidden in the darkened movie house
a lone explorer defeated by desert sands
a daring sailor at the boundless tips of capes
all this we were…
and too, the blind poet smiling
before the smallness
of the writing
that we are…

-- Esteban Moore
Translation by Dave Oliphant

bitchslap, indeed.

As Dorothy Parker says, "I'm too fucking busy, and vice versa."

Inertia

                  "Page 26, please: Minor Goddesses.

                Yes of course you should take notes."



I    Worshiped (sp?) - Fertile Crescent

         A. "Fabled, curved, & fecund as her mother" (26)

                 1. Tigress   Tigris



II   Greeks

         A. Understood at once it would not do to elevate

              her to Olympus.

                  1. Who could see her with Athena?

                      a. "fleet and flashingeyed" (27) etc.

                      b. smart



                  2. Even Aphrodite

                      a. Worked at beauty

                      b. Worked at love



          B. Built her a temple

                  1. Minor.

                  2. Marble, no rugs, a breeze to sweep



III  Kids?

         A. Yes.

         B. Immaculate Conception

                  1. "Raised themselves," she said. "It's quite

                      amazing."



IV  As Woman of 90's

         A. Friend of Can't (Used to be friend of Won't but

              they split when Can't moved in.)

         B. Coat of Arms

                  1. Bottle (vodka/chardonnay)

                  2. Comforter (LLBean p.93)

                  3. Phone

                      a. Cellular.

                      b. Other.

                          1. Message says: "Inertia. In-ER-she-a.

                                                      I'll get back to you."



V    Quiz Tues.

-- Judith Cordary

Edit: some disturbed surfer just got to this page searching for Ayn Rand pornography. Ye gods.

Late Evening Song

For a while
Let it be enough:
The responsive smile,
Though effort goes into it.

Across the warm room
Shared in candlelight,
This look beyond shame,
Possible now, at night,

Goes out to yours.
Hidden by day
And shaped by fires
Grown dead, gone gray,

That burned in other rooms I knew
Too long ago to mark,
It forms again. I look at you
Across those fires and the dark.

-- Weldon Kees

Kat writes,

Meanwhile, I underline Zen passages on right understanding and perfect independence.

When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. So when you try to make your own way, you will help others, and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way, you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you. To be independent in this true sense, we have to forget everything which we have in our mind and discover something quite new and different moment after moment. This is how we live in the world.

there are options


why ask for a place when there is the night air



entwined by accidents but softly

bowing before the headlights

rush between us asleep & awake



nothing to say really except

would you do that again, say

your name, close the curtain silently



thousands of times

thousands of stars



come to rest



-- K. Yates

Three creatures stand between pain and pleasure,
the first of them looks at a wall,
the second uses its sad spirit
and the third tiptoes;
but only the second kind
exists between you and me.

Leaning on my forehead, the day
agrees that, in fact,
there is much precision in space;
but, if bliss, which, after all, has its size,
emerges -ow! - from my mouth,
who will ask me for my word?

This encounter vested in black thread
matches
with an instant sense of eternity,
but with your passing farewell,
only the immutable matches--
your creature, the soul, my word.

-- César Vallejo
translated by epanastatis

daidala has been updated (a la Finnegan's Wake and my own breathless narratives).
"Why don’t you write books people can read?"
-- Nora Joyce, to her husband James

*
bird on a wire

Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.
Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
and by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
he said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.

-- Leonard Cohen